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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23821114">Compass Points</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap'>wickersnap</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Compliant Angst, Friends to Lovers, Healing, M/M, Mostly film scenes because I like their atmosphere, Non-Canon Relationship, Pining</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:08:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23821114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is this...” Harry croaks, “Is this how you feel when you look at her? When you see her with someone else?”</p><p>Ron leaves several times throughout their friendship, but he always comes back. It doesn’t mean Harry ever stops feeling each loss like a knife to the gut, though.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger &amp; Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ginny Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>243</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Compass Points</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is unoriginal but at least I enjoyed myself<br/>Hope you enjoy too!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lavender leaps into Ron’s arms, and after half a moment’s hesitation, he wraps her up tight in them.</p><p>A sharp stab sears its way through Harry’s chest at the sight. His applause falters. He can see them kissing, and he knows logically that Ron was, at some point, bound to find someone, but cannot seem to reconcile the image with reality. It’s a distress that squeezes his lungs and quavers in his every breath, even as he smiles for them and doesn’t look away.</p><p>A hand slides over his wrist and pulls gently. Harry turns to Hermione, who is neither looking at him nor Ron and Lavender, but at the floor. She is steady, calm, but he can tell she’s shaken too.</p><p>Grateful for a decision made without him he slinks back through the crowd, wherever Hermione leads him, and tries to keep one foot landing in front of the other without trembling too noticeably.</p><p>“Is this what it’s like?” she asks when she sits them in an empty, open chamber. “Is this what it’s always like for you?”</p><p>“I imagine you’re much the same,” he rasps, letting his head fall onto her shoulder, hiding one watery eye in her shirt. Her hands come up to gentle him, one soothing through tangled hair and the other down the inside of his thigh. He wraps his arm around her back in a weak semblance of gratitude, and they hold each other while he shudders through every breath. </p><p>It’s quiet down here, with only the wind rustling dust and debris across the floor to hear. He feels Hermione wave her wand arm gently and three twittering little birds spring into existence above them. Harry tries to focus on them and forget the tears behind his tightly closed eyes.</p><p>He’s been so good for so long, he doesn’t want to cry now.</p><p>“Is this...” he croaks, “Is this how you feel when you look at her? When you see her with someone else?” Hermione nods and scratches softly at the nape of his neck. He feels like a cat. He wishes he could be a cat, right now.</p><p>With nothing but the birds and a gentle night’s breeze lulling them to sleep, it’s hard to miss the heavy running footsteps and shrieks of giggles when they approach. Harry doesn’t look up, doesn’t dare look at that open door in front of him, just turns his head farther into Hermione’s neck and loves her because she lets him.</p><p>“Oh!” says Lavender sweetly when they tumble into the room. “I think this room’s taken.”</p><p>But Ron, apparently, can’t leave well enough alone. </p><p>“Hey, Harry?” he asks. “You all right mate?” His feet crunch over grit as he takes a few steps closer.</p><p>“No, Ron,” Hermione says harshly. “But you go on and have fun, will you?”</p><p>“But—“</p><p><em> “Go, </em> Ron.”</p><p>“Harry—“</p><p>
  <em> “Go!” </em>
</p><p>Ron stops in the middle of the room. Harry doesn’t lift his head to see, despite how much he wants to. He isn’t going to torture himself with that. He’s had enough. </p><p>He sniffs, loudly, but only to keep himself from dirtying Hermione’s clothes. The tears are leaking out from behind his eyes anyway with how tightly he’s squeezing, and suddenly he just wants everyone to go away.</p><p>“Mate—“</p><p>“Ron!” Hermione shouts, standing and leaving Harry to wipe furiously at his face. “You are the <em> stupidest—fucking——argh!” </em> She holds out her wand, to Harry’s shock, and points it at Ron. <em> “Oppugno!” </em></p><p>At once the little birds turn into a swooping dive headed straight for him. Harry watches Ron stagger back, open-mouthed, into Lavender’s waiting hands. She pulls him backwards as the birds surround him in a small feathery storm of noise and runs when they let off for just a moment. They zoom after him, but when he’s yanked abruptly out of the room, they collide with tiny thuds against the old wooden door and vanish.</p><p>Hermione sobs and falls back down to the stone step. She turns into Harry’s chest and hugs him, so he does the only thing he knows and lifts his arms to hug her back. He hides his face again, in her shoulder, and cries.</p><p> </p><p>“She’s great, you know,” Ron is saying with a terribly sappy expression. “I’ve barely got any homework done for a week, though.”</p><p>Harry hums and nods in what he thinks are all the right places. Hermione, who likewise cannot stand his discussion of happiness while she can still only watch Ginny over the tops of her books, huffs irritably and marches Harry away to class. Ron, left behind once again, splutters indignantly.</p><p> </p><p>Harry gets back to the dorm one night only for the first thing out of Ron’s mouth to be, “Harry, I think I love her.”</p><p>Harry freezes with his hand still on the doorknob.</p><p>“Good,” he says. “Great. Brilliant. Do you want to go and tell her?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ron sighs, still staring out of the window. His eyes glint warmly in the moonlight. “Can you introduce me?”</p><p>“To Lavender?” Harry asks. “Your girlfriend?”</p><p>“Lavender?” he says, looking horrified. “No, not her!”</p><p>When Harry finds the empty box of chocolates on his bed he almost laughs. Just one more terrible joke played on him by the twins, he can tell himself. </p><p>He can’t even hate the part of him that sighs with relief until Ron is seizing, writhing on the floor of Slughorn’s rooms and Harry is rifling desperately through his ingredients drawers. He finds a bezoar, finally, and forces it into Ron’s convulsing throat with unsteady, shaking hands.</p><p>Lavender finds them in the hospital wing the next morning. She looks straight past Ginny and Harry, who is sat on one side of Ron and tentatively holding the fingers of his right hand, and shrieks at Hermione.</p><p>“What is <em> she </em> doing here!” she demands.</p><p>“I’d ask the same of you,” Hermione says coolly. </p><p>Lavender bristles. “I <em> happen </em> to be his girlfriend!”</p><p>“And I <em> happen </em> to be one of his best friends of six years,” Hermione snaps back. Harry wonders how life in the girls’ dorm has been, recently. Icy, probably.</p><p>Because Harry’s life is one never-ending soap opera, Ron chooses that exact moment to start mumbling in his sleep. Hermione sits back down by his side and Lavender hurries over to lean over Harry. Harry edges away, but doesn’t let go of Ron.</p><p>“Hhher...” Ron is saying. “Hher... mi...”</p><p>Harry swallows thickly. He can’t stand the thought that he’d been hoping for something, hoping for anything, because he’d told himself under no circumstances that hoping was allowed.</p><p>“Ha... rry...” is the next thing Ron manages. Despite himself, Harry’s heart leaps.</p><p>Lavender shrieks again. She turns on her heel and races out of the hospital wing, followed by the stern shouts of Madam Pomfrey. Harry catches Hermione’s eye across the bed and she grins cheekily. </p><p>“Ah,” Dumbledore says. “Young love.” But when he looks at them, his twinkling eyes slide not to the obvious answer, but to Harry instead.</p><p>Feeling sliced raw and open, Harry ducks his head and doesn’t look up until they leave.</p><p> </p><p>The door to Number Four, Privet Drive opens to admit a flurry of maroon and ginger. Ron collides with Harry, knocking him three steps back into the hall with his enthusiasm. Harry grips him back equally as tightly, pressing his nose into his neck and taking a huge, steadying breath. </p><p>When Ron pulls back he holds Harry at arm’s length and gives him a long look up and down, as if checking he’s still there. His freckles paint constellations, as they always have, and Harry loves him. Hermione comes in next, throwing her arms around Harry’s neck and grinning into his cheek.</p><p>“It’s so good to see you all,” Harry tells them, and leads them into the empty living room.</p><p>“Good to see you too, mate,” Ron says. He sticks to Harry’s elbow as if they’d been separated a year, not just a few weeks.</p><p>When the six of them morph and twist into perfect copies of Harry’s own person, it’s Ron who knows exactly which one is him.</p><p> </p><p>Harry can hear Ginny and Hermione in the kitchen. They laugh softly at something Ginny says.</p><p>George slips down the stairs in front of him and winks, creeping around into the kitchen with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. Harry glances around the wall and gasps, gently, to see Hermione cradling Ginny so closely, to see Ginny’s fingers tangled in Hermione’s hair and pulling her closer while they kiss.</p><p>Hermione must open her eyes, because George grins and toasts her with his mug.</p><p>“Morning,” he says, and both girls tremble with fits of giggles.</p><p>“What’s gotten into them?” Ron asks, appearing at Harry’s side. Harry jumps.</p><p>“Oh, err, nothing, probably.”</p><p>Ron frowns at him. “You all right?”</p><p>“I’d be better if I wasn’t polyjuiced as your cousin,” he laughs weakly. “But you look nice.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Ron grins, flicking his eyes up to Harry’s face and to the floor again. “You look good, too. Would be better if you were you, though.”</p><p>Harry feels the blood rise in his cheeks. “What’s my name again? Barny?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ron snorts. “Better than pretending to be <em> your </em> cousin, though, isn’t it?”</p><p>“He’s all right,” Harry says, and twirls on the spot, “but not half as dashing.”</p><p>Ron laughs then, reaching out to steady Harry by the arm when he trips over his feet. Harry leans into him accidentally-on-purpose, and just enjoys the closeness.</p><p>“Are you two done over there?” Ginny asks, appearing around the corner.</p><p>“Might want to fix your hair, Gin,” Harry tells her. He winks for good measure. She laughs and blushes, pulling out her wand and wandering off to find a mirror.</p><p>Ron raises a questioning brow at him. He just smirks and pulls him outside to help with the preparations.</p><p> </p><p>The marquee fills with screams and tumbling bodies. Harry ducks between them, desperately reaching out for Hermione and Ron far away at the other end. Hermione snatches up his hand and they apparate straight into the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue. They twirl out of the way of an oncoming bus and stand, breathing heavily, against the roadside railings. </p><p>Harry looks to his side and sees Hermione’s shattered expression, the mascara-black tear that tracks its way down her cheek involuntarily. Ron looks over at the same moment, slack-jawed and fighting to remain calm. When his eyes meet Harry’s they’re swimming with emotion that Harry can’t name, but definitely knows.</p><p> </p><p>Harry is awake on his sofa in Grimmauld Place. Hermione is snoring gently across from him, and Ron on the floor hasn’t moved for half an hour. Harry knows that he’s awake—has listened to his sleeping habits for years—and Ron must know likewise. Harry pretends he knows none of this when his hand, hanging limply inches above the ground, is gripped loosely by Ron’s own.</p><p>By morning Ron is gone, hidden in the kitchen making tea, but Harry’s fingers aren’t yet cold.</p><p> </p><p>They get the locket, but Ron gets splinched. Hermione soothes him, shivering and sobbing though she is, and Harry can’t bring himself out of his shock to help with anything other than summoning the bottle of dittany.</p><p>Eventually Ron stops yelling and jerking beneath them. Bloody-handed and shaking, Hermione gets to her feet and picks up her wand. She stands with her back to them and waves her arm in wide arcs, drawing their perimeter through the air as she walks.</p><p>Harry huddles on the ground and holds Ron in his lap, bloodied fingers running thoughtlessly through his hair and over his cheek.</p><p> </p><p>Standing in front of his parents’ grave, Harry can’t help but ache for the wrongness of it all. He’s off-kilter, unbalanced, with one arm around Hermione’s back and the other cold and empty. She leans on his shoulder and sniffs quietly, and he can’t help missing the second pillar of warmth that should be seeping through his coat on his other side. </p><p>He looks down at the headstone and imagines his mother and father sitting there, smiling at him. The tears glide easily over his face.</p><p> </p><p>They lie the locket on a nearby log. It opens to Harry’s command, and the thing that blows out of it knocks them ten feet back in opposite directions. Harry crawls forward, keeping well beneath the billowing black cloud of miasma. </p><p>“I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley,” rasps Voldemort’s voice. “I know your fears, your hopes...”</p><p>“Ron!” he shouts. “Don’t listen to it! It’s not real!”</p><p>A cloud of black splits and splinters towards Ron, forming thousands of tiny sprinting spiders.</p><p>“Least loved by your mother... Least loved by your friends...”</p><p>
  <em> “Ron!” </em>
</p><p>Two grey, half-whitewashed, forms manifest above him, above the little open locket. Harry himself steps into view, unnaturally smooth and unblemished, hand-in-hand with an equally uncanny Hermione.</p><p><em> “Ron!” </em> he yells again. <em> “Kill it, Ron!” </em></p><p>“We don’t need you,” says the evil, disgusting thing wearing his face. “Who could love <em> you, </em> when I have everything I need with her?”</p><p>And then, and then the clothes are disappearing, and it’s one of the most disturbing scenes Harry has ever watched. This wrong Hermione slides her fingers over too-perfect Harry’s chest, meets his lips with fervour and hunger.</p><p><em> “Ron!” </em> he screams, <em> “It’s not true!” </em></p><p>He hears a yell from behind the log and rolls to the floor just in time. The sword of Gryffindor slams down through the wood where his head had been, and the crackling voice of Voldemort howls.</p><p>The black smoke clears and Ron ambles towards him. He picks up the locket, split nearly in half, and dangles it from the chain.</p><p>Harry staggers to his feet and pretty much falls into Ron, shivering beyond belief, when he tries to hug him. Ron laughs and falls backwards under his weight and they both go down, down into the snow. Ron’s arms land over Harry’s back, holding him despite everything. Harry laughs weakly and hides his face against Ron’s cold, wet collarbone. Without thinking about it he’s pressing a kiss there, small enough he’d think Ron hadn’t noticed other than for the small noise he makes.</p><p>“Sorry,” Harry gasps, pushing up on his palms and away from Ron’s body. Ron stops him with his hands tightening on Harry’s shirt, scouring his face with intense concentration.</p><p>“Really?” he whispers. “Do you...?”</p><p>Harry gapes uselessly. “I...”</p><p>“Harry, do you—me—I—“</p><p>Harry closes his eyes and nods a tiny, jerky nod. He gasps when Ron’s icy fingers slide up his back and into his hair. Ron pulls him down again, so carefully, and Harry knows he’s giving him this out, this chance to take it back. </p><p>Why Harry would ever take it back he doesn’t know.</p><p>He leans in the rest of the way and finally, <em> finally </em> meets Ron’s lips with his. Ron groans underneath him, warming them even while their skin freezes. He kisses back hungrily, like a man starved, and Harry can feel the tears welling up behind his eyes again. They kiss there, hidden in the snow, and things start feeling right again.</p><p>Hermione meets them outside the tent. She sees the sword and the broken locket and Harry’s hand in Ron’s and blows her fuse.</p><p><em> “Hey?!” </em> she shouts. “You’re gone for <em> weeks </em> and all you can say is <em> hey?!” </em> She runs to him and pummels his chest with her fists.</p><p>“You stupid—fucking—idiot!” she tells him. “Did you know how scared we were? How fucking—<em> terrified? </em> How much Harry—“</p><p>She screams and throws her hands in the air before storming off back to the tent. <em> “Never </em> do that again, Ron Weasley!”</p><p>“I think she’s pleased to see you,” Harry says.</p><p>Ron stares at him like he’s lost it. “You do?”</p><p>Harry grins and squeezes his hand. “Would you like to come in and change, or shall we freeze?”</p><p>“I don’t really care,” he says faintly. “I have you.”</p><p>Harry kisses him again, for that.</p><p> </p><p>When Harry dies, Ron and Hermione’s screams are worse than Professor McGonagall’s. He can hear them all straining to run to him. He can’t, for the life of him, pinpoint another moment where he realised how loved he is.</p><p>His heart almost tears in two.</p><p> </p><p>They cry for Fred. They cry for Remus and Tonks. They cry for Lavender, for Colin, for every other face missing from the hall. </p><p>Harry can’t imagine life without them, and now he’s faced with it, it doesn’t feel real. </p><p>His family grounds him, despite it all. Ron clings to him and sobs with him, their tears smearing as one across their faces. Mrs Weasley pulls them both into her arms and cries more, and then George collapses to the floor and they, Ginny and Hermione sit with him there. Mr Weasley can’t bear to think of leaving his son’s side, no matter how cold his skin grows.</p><p>Bill and Charlie and Percy hold them through their own sorrow. Fleur brushes the hair from Ginny’s face and props them up against the benches. Harry cries until he passes out and wakes up in the Gryffindor common room, curled up and stiff in his favourite armchair with Ron. Neither of them can force open their cramped fingers for ages, clinging tightly to each other even when their sobs have long since died out.</p><p> </p>
<h6>- x -</h6><p> </p><p>Ron finds them in the apple orchard. George is leaning, dozing against the tree between its roots as Harry gazes outwards from his thick, sturdy branch.</p><p>“I brought lunch,” he says quietly. George stirs regardless, reaching up to take the basket out of Ron’s hands. They sit in a small circle and force down two sandwiches each. The breeze rifles gently through their hair.</p><p>Here, at the Burrow, life still feels like limbo.</p><p> </p><p>Ron finds them in the apple orchard. This time it’s Hermione and Ginny in the tree next to Harry’s, murmuring softly to each other. Whether they’ve not noticed him out here or simply don’t care, they don’t seem surprised to see him when Ron announces lunch and coaxes them back to Earth. For the second time, they sit in a circle, joined momentarily by George, and have two sandwiches each. </p><p>It feels less like living someone else’s life and more like drifting through a different version of that bright white King’s Cross Station. He tells them what it was like.</p><p> </p><p>Ron finds them in the apple orchard. He’d only left for a moment, really, to fetch a blanket, so maybe it’s cheating.</p><p>Bill and Charlie and Percy are with them now, under the late twilight, and the eight of them sit in a half-circle between the trees and watch Hermione’s fireflies bumble lazily from place to place. Ron sits with his knee over Harry’s and their fingers interlaced. Harry kisses him quietly, softly, under the soft swimming glow.</p><p>It feels less like living someone else’s life and more like healing. </p><p>It feels like coming to terms with peacetime, with what life felt like, before. </p><p>Ron sits with his knee over Harry’s and their fingers interlaced, and Harry no longer feels like he’s lost.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me on <a href="https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a><br/>Incredible, incredible art by <a href="https://anaoldrin.eu/">anaoldrin</a> <a href="https://anaoldrin.eu/post/619336487685718016">here!!</a> Thank you so much!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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